A supply chain plan describes items to be procured and operations to be performed by entities within a supply chain network in order to deliver materials or products to an entity, such as, for example, a customer within the supply chain network. Various constraints may be placed on the supply chain network, such as, for example, limitations on the availability of materials or products from one of the entities within the supply chain network. However, due to these various constraints, one or more of these entities within the supply chain network may not be able to satisfy all of the supply chain demand. The inability to satisfy all of the supply chain demand within the supply chain network is undesirable.
In an effort to satisfy supply chain demand, prior art entities within the supply chain network have tried to optimize this supply chain planning problem, also referred to as a supply chain planning problem, associated with these various constraints. However, this optimization has proved disadvantageous since, for example, the planning problem size and complexity on the datasets associated with each of the entities within the supply chain network is quite large. Consequently, as the size of a planning problem grows, the computational power and time required to solve the supply chain planning problem also increases. This increase in computational power and time required to solve the supply chain planning problem is undesirable.